A furniture design competition that turns trash into eye-catching treasure

"We wanted to show that even with salvage materials you can still make high-end furniture," Patrick Condon said.

For the Green Project's annual Salvations furniture design competition, New Orleans native Patrick Condon this year teamed with French furniture maker Arthur Seigneur to create a fireplace bar from a repurposed cypress mantel. It's an eye-catching piece, adorned with intricate red wheat straw marquetry, a technique Seigneur learned in his homeland.

"It is kind of like New Orleans with a Parisian touch to it," Condon said. "We wanted to show that even with salvage materials you can still make high-end furniture, and we also wanted to stay true to traditional craftsmanship but also offer something unique and original."

Condon estimates the two spent a combined 160 hours of labor on the piece.

SALVATIONS

Admission: $60 for members of the Green Project, $75 for non-members. Tickets can be purchased at www.thegreenproject.org or at the event.

The Salvations furniture design competition was birthed after Hurricane Katrina, when the city saw its landfills brimming with construction waste, said the Green Project's Christal White.

An extension of the non-profit group's overarching mission, Salvations aims to keep materials in use and out of the garbage. That, "and to shine a light on those artists who are doing things creatively with the most ordinary of materials," White said. "It sounds cliché but literally to pull the treasure from the trash."

This year's Salvations exhibition and gala auction -- on Saturday, Sept. 14, from 6:30 to 10 p.m. at The Shops at Canal Place -- is the biggest yet. Almost 50 professional artists and hobbyists contributed 65 functional works of art. The designs run the gamut, White said.

With each of the items composed of at least 90 percent salvaged materials, Salvations challenges artists -- and consumers -- to dispose of the disposable mentality, to look at materials and the city in a new way.

Since helping launch the competition six years ago, White has witnessed the evolution of the event and the repurposing movement at large. It's a trend that continues to surprise her.

"What we really thought we were going to get was a lot of materials that you could easily identify," White said. "We were thinking we would see a chair made out of a toilet or things like that, so we didn't really know what to expect, and what we got was the complete opposite. What we got was high-end woodworking that was just breathtaking."

This year is particularly strong in pieces that "echo our New Orleans aesthetic," White said. "It's lots of local pride. People put their hometown stamp on it."

Hugo Montero, who owns Casa Borrega restaurant, and Ricardo Ponce teamed up to create a shotgun-style doghouse of colorful tin metal and beadboard, reflecting what Montero described as "the vernacular architecture" and a love for companion animals.

Another artist, Chancey Becnel, who co-owns Global Recycling with his brother Shane, has made a career out of the repurposing mission. "I feel that I have a social responsibility to create things from what others would consider junk," he said.

Becnel donated three pieces to the event, including a red outdoor seating unit constructed from a 55-gallon steel drum, its base made from a wood pallet cut in half. Like all the entries in Salvations, the result is a whimsically functional piece, both playful and practical on top of the upcycling angle.

"I try to find every opportunity to divert materials from ever seeing a landfill," Becnel said. "Creating these pieces of furniture allows me to do just that, mostly with pieces that weren't even able to be recycled."

Becnel and his fellow artists' pieces also allow the Green Project to sustain itself. Proceeds from the Salvations event and auction will benefit the organization's environmental education program and paint recycling program -- the latter of which is the only one of its kind in the Gulf South region.

A panel of judges will award honors for best in show, craftsmanship, most inventive reuse of materials, best traditional and modern designs, in addition to two people's choice awards. The public can view the various pieces in the competition at the Shops at Canal Place.

"One of the things that we want to get out of this is that people are inspired to try something like this for themselves," White said. "We want everybody to try to pick up a new thing and to walk through our warehouse and find something that maybe nobody else likes but they like, and it trips a cord with them, and all of a sudden it's a lamp.